


Hero

by WeLookedLikeGiants



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Beware, Character Death, Color AU, Drug Use, I got ocs in mah bag, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Like, M/M, One of My Favorites, and drug use, for real, so like, this story is kinna heavy with the whole depression, worked hard on it, yo, ♥
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 08:08:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18616606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeLookedLikeGiants/pseuds/WeLookedLikeGiants
Summary: He Never Ever saw it comin at all, but it's alright, it's alright, he's the hero of his own story, don't need to be saved





	Hero

**Author's Note:**

> I want to post the final chapter to Mornings, but like, Highkey, I get terrible writers block whenever I even try, so here is this. Yall might wanna go over tags, shit is heavy, but it's got its happy moments. I know it's something that I put a lot of work into that will make other people happy with the way it's turned out. disclaimer: I am, in no way shape or form, using the content within the story to romanticize the problems that appear to these characters.

The history books and the novels had always referred to ‘colors’ as a display of strong feeling. The scientific phenomenon had been described as ‘The retina’s in our eyes have specific cones that are generally only activated during a time of strong emotion, paired with a bioluminescent chemical in our bodies that are triggered by the oxytocin that’s released from our brains. These said emotions cause a very rare phenomenon to be triggered. These colors are usually a heterogeneous (blend of genes) mixture of the different colors that the parents themselves emit. I.e. a father that illuminates ‘orange’ and a mother that illuminates ‘blue’ would blend together to make the color green, brown, or mauve or other colors in the children that they produce.’ 

It’s said that everyone has a different color that they illuminate when faced with a strong feeling. For example, my pregnant mom.

The one thing mother redeemed herself for was when she told me her story. My mother was 17, and she was on her way to a bright future. She was valedictorian, lettered in three different sports, achieved academic all-state, and had been accepted with a full ride scholarship to Harvard for study in law. Then she gave it up. It was the start of her senior year, and she had gotten into a relationship with a man who was captain of the football team and also had a full ride to Juilliard for his skill with a bow and a violin. It was homecoming night, a week after I had been conceived, and she caught him. He was with the head cheerleader.   
She said she got so angry that she just started driving, after a while, she started to see red, literally and figuratively. She told me she emitted a red color. She just kept driving until she had arrived in my hometown, New York City, or more specifically the Lower East side of Manhattan. My mother couldn’t afford a place, but she found a ‘friend,’ there will be more on this. This friend could give her a place to stay. That’s where my mother’s career started, and where her life ended.

Later I found where my father before he finally ended his miserable life, was. I got to talk to him once and only once. He had told me that he had seen his color only once when he was a 22-year-old; and in fact, the only reason I even remotely cared about him was because of his story about what and why he saw his color. He started the story with “I was at a concert,” but after that, the story always seemed to change. He said he was at a concert for a band which he always referred to as “DCFC” and as a song titled “Line of Best Fit” had began, a screen with a lonely boat in the background surrounded by a backdrop of ‘Deep Sea Blue’ or what he described as “the color that almost mirrors a vast, unconquerable sea of emotion.” His eyes gleamed and he could finally see the thing he had waited so long to see. The only thing displayed with the color was the screen, that of which he always described that he assumes was only colored on the off chance that someone had the opportunity to see it, and his own body which had, in the most oddest and unlikeliest of occurrences, reflected the screen’s display, but was much brighter. However, my favorite part of the story is when he explains what the people in the concert were exhibiting. He looked around and described the venue as being filled with three different colors coming from three different people. He described, as best as he could, ‘Green’, ‘Orange’, and ‘Brown’ all of which had been described as “pulsing from their bodies, like the sun or...more like a strobe light…” he would correct himself.

I was born in a shitty excuse for a neighborhood with shitty excuses for parents, or lack thereof; yet, all the same, I was given him. Took me a while to realize he was all that I was waiting for, and it took me a while to seal the deal, and now that I think about it; I shoulda done it earlier, but that’s in the past now.   
I lived in a place where no child should even know about, let alone live in. I lived in a brothel. A tall, worn out building that couldn’t be distinguished well between other buildings in the area. This provided a perfect cover for the unholy events that would take place within the confines of the high-rise. Within the building, there were many atrocities committed for the sake of nothing except that the actions of the residents had nothing better to do in the day, or rather with their own lives. The people who resided within the tenement were, in a manner of speaking, the people that someone would go to end their life. That reason is precisely why I lived there and is also the reason why I refused to stay within that wretched place any longer than I had to. 

However, not all of the people inside of the whore house were necessarily ‘bad’, in fact, most were nice when they weren’t strung-out on drugs or hung-over from those drugs. 

In fact, I had friends there.

These ‘friends’, were prostitutes and drug addicts, and most were there only because they didn’t have any other outlet to make money because three-quarters of them had at least a felony struck upon their record, this statistic included my mother. Most of the residents had mouths to feed, while most others had a drug addiction to feed. Within the former group, lay a woman whom I would consider to be my real mother. This woman, let’s call her Ashley, had 3 children, a mortgage, and a dying father who needed expensive medicine, she worked three jobs and could only make enough to afford paycheck to paycheck from those jobs, and she had to turn to the last thing anyone wants to turn to. She gave me a room, food, schooling, and a bed, free of charge when my mother had shown up. Sure, this room was in a brothel, but it was on the top floor, which was off-limits to ‘clients.’ Ashley was a great person in every aspect of the definition. All except one. Ashley had a terrible secret. While she was certainly the only woman I could even begin to say that had deserved more than what she had been allotted in her life, Ashley was also cursed with an eternal sadness and the luck of a Kennedy. She was damned to never see her children grow past the age of 10. 

Child Protective Services, however, had found the children looking for their lost mother. The government who had only wanted to see the children become something that could prevent these events from happening again had instead seen the children grow up to become what no decent mother would want to see their children grow into. We grew up with each other, we loved each other.   
The eldest child, Jacob, a man I had no intent to be acquainted with even from a young age, had become a psychopath with no intent to better the lives of other people, in fact, all he did was destroy the lives of what other mothers had built up. He had a kill count of around 24 children. All of which had mothers that loved them dearly, much like the love that his mother had shown him. Most would call this boy a monster, but then again, most don’t know this child’s suffering and pain.

The younger had only become what her dear mother had done with her life, except she did it much less well. This girl had the potential to become something so much more than what everyone thought she could. She also had fallen into what everyone had expected her to end up. The irony of this girl’s life is tremendous in the fact that she had died to the same disease that she lost her mother too, making the past repeat itself within a whole other level of itself.  
And the youngest, I’m excited to say, made it out. Moved out of New York and went to Oklahoma, went to college, got a degree and a career, married, and had kids of his own. He was a kid with the fire that his mother possessed, and the will of stone that he needed to get out of that situation and into a nice direction he so very much deserved.

Now, on to the more important subject: Me.

I saw colors 4 times in my life, which is one above the average. Which is pretty lucky in terms of where I come from and the circumstances I grew up with.

I’ve never considered myself to be a product of my surroundings, if anything, they only taught me to strafe away from the temptations that were always available. The fact that I had to grow up in a seedy part of a city taught me to be resourceful, to not rely on others for help and comfort. I’ve got myself, what more do I need?

This is what I thought about what I could do in life. To move through it no matter how hard it got. Leave the state if I had to, but I would handle myself as well as I could.

The weakness of this thought that I had had for more than a decade, was a person of all things. We met at such a young age too.  
When I met Sunny, I was on my way to the part of town where people were known to be shot, mugged, or killed for no goddamn reason. Sunny, a thin kid, who was 9 at the time, hated his lifestyle to put it lightly, so he thought it was a genius idea to run to the lower-class area. He was striding along the street, his clothes were torn and dirtied, which was common in a place like this. He was the average height for his age. I knew that he wasn’t from our parts mainly because of how he walked. He had the clothes that looked like what we wore and the dirty skin that we had, but he didn’t have that manic, sad step that was apparent in every living soul in this area. He was too happy to be from our parts. When I found him, he was talking to a man that I recognized, the supplier for my buildings addiction. 

“Hey, Albert, why are you all the way in my neighborhood, don’t you live a mile away?” I wrapped my arm around the kid’s shoulder and winked at him. He got the hint and agreed.

“Yeah, I think I just got lost though, could you show me the way home?” he asked, playing along perfectly. We walked back to my mediocre home, we walked through the door. It used to be one of those doors where you had to be buzzed in, but the owner broke that when he saw a frugal business venture on the horizon.  
I remembered the place where we were and I took the jacket that I was wearing and put a makeshift blindfold over his innocent eyes, and he immediately asks “Why do you want me to close my eyes and stuff?” 

How could I answer him? Say it was the junkies, like my mother, who were shooting up their veins to escape reality for just a little longer. Or the prostitutes like Ashley, who were jerking off rich married men, men of which he could have possibly known, for a couple of bucks to get through the day. Or the drunk idiots beating those prostitutes and junkies because of their own problems. It was all of the above, but I wasn’t going to let a kid like him see or know that. 

When we arrived at my safe-haven, he immediately asks “You never answered my question...” I didn’t know what to say to him, so I just lied; “Because this place is secret.” and he responded with a grin and I ask him why and he just says, “ ‘Cause I know how to get here, silly.” Horror spreads across my young mind. He shouldn’t have to learn about the worst parts about being an adult later in his life, not when he’s 9 years old. I shook off the cold thoughts and just brought out some old paper, and some black and white and everything-in-between crayons that Ashley had given me, from a nearby dresser. We start coloring. I draw simple stick figures playing on a street and when I look to Sunny’s drawings, I start to analyze what was being sketched with nothing but a crayon. He had started to draw a nearby lamp, a radio playing some recent songs, and a light gray dresser, but rather than just drawing these things, he was intimately drawing the shadows cast by the lamp, never fully trying to draw the lamp but rather trying to draw the outline itself. 

He snaps me out of my trance and asks what my name is. I can’t respond because of my surprise to his attention to detail, but more importantly; it was because not even I knew the answer to that. I always just took to using this name around police and other adults. I don’t know if I can trust this kid, so I just told him what I thought was best and said “Neptune, yours?” he holds out his hand for a handshake and says “Sun Wukong, but I like to go by Sunny.” this reminded me of an article I had seen in a newspaper this morning. Apparently a businessman who owned nearly half of the real estate in the east side of New York, had a son who had gone missing. His name was John Wukong, and the description for his kid had fit Sun perfectly. It clicked in my head the instant he said his last name, “Are you the son of John Wukong?” I asked.   
“Yeah, but I don’t like to talk about my parents.” the radio started playing lowly in the background. The sound barely audible amongst all of the other things that could easily draw more focus, but hearing lyrics like “Only Sunshine,” and “skies….gray.” caught the attention.

I shook his hand and saw a spark of color. Yellow had burst from his hand and a dark violet had illuminated from mine. My eyes bolded while his lit up with excitement, a goofy smile soon followed as he pulled me into a hug. 

The color was there for a moment and then it was gone. This was the first of 3 times I had experienced. I heard a pounding coming from the stairs, and Sun jumps away, “you gotta hide me, I don’t wanna go back.” How he could tell it was his father, I’ll never know. I point to the closet, still stricken with confusion, and he runs to it and closes the door. A man slams the door open and yells at me. I just shut myself off at that point. He demands me to tell him where his son is, but I just nod. He smacks me with his right hand, which had been speckled with several rings and other jewelry. I fall down to the ground, rubbing my cheek, and I hear a small whimper from the other side of the room.

He looks over to the noise and stomps with a fit of unending anger to Sun’s position. He practically tears the door of its hinges and grabs him. Sun screamed a scream that resounded with a feeling of both fear and sadness. Sun knew exactly what was going to happen when he got back home.   
John walked over to me and said, “You better be lucky that the people here are the reason why I’m still in business, or you would be going straight to the slaughterhouse.” I didn’t know what he meant back then, and I still don’t even now, but I’m going to take a guess and say that it’s nowhere good.

3 weeks after that, Sun would come to visit me at the slums every day right after school, despite my best wishes for him to stay safe, or at least protect his innocence from the horrifying sights that lie inside of my home. Just as I had lied to him, he had lied to me about how his parents accepted that he wanted me to be his friend, and that how his parents ‘just didn’t understand the circumstances’. Big words for a kid, but I was alright with his good-intentioned dishonesty.   
We did this for years. Dropping in and out of each other lives when we had other things to attend to, like his attendance at a business camp for a month when he was 12, or how I had won a trip to the capital for excellence in mathematics when I was 14. There was one month where I had to visit him in the hospital. Broken ribs, and a torn ligament in his right shoulder, this was a couple of months ago, he told me he did it at “Boxing practice.” It was scary at how good that kid had become at lying.

Until one day, approximately 6 years after we had met. Sun arrives on schedule like usual. Everything is normal until he reaches into his dirtied backpack. I could tell he was getting better at coming here as he had picked up little tricks that everyone else had displayed at a more casual layer. Sun was always extremely analytical, but only to a certain point. That point being his attention span and his interest. He handed me a black piece of folded cloth and said: “you’re going to meet my parents a little bit more formally this time!” He had brought me a tuxedo.

I go into the bathroom and put the tux on and walk out to see that Sunny is in his own. He says to me “I just called a limo, we should be going soon!” a sweet smile appears on his face and he pulls me outside of the door and he asks me “should I close my eyes?” at this point he had probably gotten used to the sight of overdosing meth-heads, so I denied his question. We get outside of the building and just as he had promised, there was a vehicle waiting for us. A nice long limo that had certainly not been the first to arrive at this very house, and would not be the last. 

We arrive at his penthouse, which had been stationed near to Central Park, view and all. We walk in and it’s nothing like I had ever seen. The walls were clean, the floor shined a sort-of metallic luster, and the air didn’t have a smell that was reminiscent of the ocean. Sun told me to take off my old, dirty sneakers, which hadn’t matched any of my fancy attire. I did as he requested and then he told me to stay there while he went and got his parents. I stayed put so as not to break anything in this pristine-condition house.   
Sun comes back from around the corner and beckons me to follow his lead. I follow him through the living room and into a kitchen where a maid is preparing a cake. The maid asks who Sun had brought into the house and he had a one-word answer, “Nep, sorry for the lack of notice Maribelle!” and the maid went right back to her work. A little bit of anxiety exits my mind from this reaction.

We stop at a corner and he turns around and looks at me for a good 15 seconds, “You look nice!” he says with that childish grin. He flinches for a second, sticks his tongue out, licks his thumb, and rubs my face for a second. “You missed a spot,” he says assuredly. I didn’t comprehend what had just happened but went with it anyway.   
We continue into a dining room. Sunny pulls out a chair and tells me to sit, then shuffles quickly out of the room for a second. I continue to sit down, awkwardly patting the table every couple seconds I’m alone. I start to think about why Sunny had chosen today, of all dates, to bring me here? It’s hard to even imagine as to why he did. There was a cake, so a celebration of some sort. Good grades? No, knowing him, there’s no way it could be that. Maybe it could be that he performed well at a sport he was in. Couldn’t be that either, he came over to my place immediately after school every day. What could it be?

Sunny walks back into the room and sits down directly across from me. There are only two remaining chairs at the rectangular shaped table left. I ask him who the chairs are for and he says the obvious answer. He proceeds to tell me that his parents will be home soon and that He will introduce me as soon as they get home.

I find it odd that we are sitting at the table before his parents are even home, let alone present and seated, but I don’t question any further as these people are on a completely different planet compared to what I had gotten used to. Sun starts making small talk with me, saying things like “So how are you liking the place?” and “Do you need anything?” which would garner a generic answer from me. I also found it a little weird that a 16-year-old knew more manners than most grown men did, but I didn’t question that either because of his rich background.

These mannerisms were contradictory to his behavior while we were at my home. He was a lot more casual while he was at my place, so why had he changed his disposition while he was at his house? His posture was much tenser and unnaturally straight. His lips had been twisted from his usual smile to a simple, unfeeling, indifference towards the situation. This disinterest was less like a lack of concern and more like a feeling of pure fear. 

I didn’t know what to make of this, so instead of questioning, I followed suit. I couldn’t force my face to twist into a smile though. Sunny deserved everything that I had, but that just wasn’t something that I could give him, no, that was too much to ask from me. So, for the next five minutes, we sat in awkward silence, with empty plates in front of us, and empty looks on our faces.

The front door, after what felt like hours, slammed, making a large boom that reverberated through the house. Shoes clacked on the floor, and coats made a low rustling if the ear trained on the sound. Another 20 seconds pass, then the food arrives on the table, two adults soon following after. A man of 40 years, whom I had barely recognized from that fateful night all those years ago; and a woman who looked 25, but was closer to 35, especially with a look of pure and utter contempt.

They sat in unison with a certain prim and proper guise that, from the looks of it, seems as though they had kept up from the moment they were born. Maribelle had brought in a beautiful and healthy amount of food, so much so that it looked as if it could feed 10 people. Lasagne, steak, and Salmon, broccoli, asparagus, as well as 2 bottles of wine, one red, one white. She uncorked the white and poured it into the woman’s glass, then served her the Salmon with the steamed asparagus. Then she moved onto the red wine, pouring that into the glass, then slapping a piece of steak onto the plate, and carelessly scooped the broccoli onto space next to it. 

Maribelle gave the lasagne to both of us, giving a healthy portion, but being delicate with the way she handled the food. She asked if I had wanted any vegetables, and I, being the child I am, refused. 

The man spoke up “Pour him some of the Red wine, Maribelle.” to which Sunny, Maribelle, and I all rose our eyebrows simultaneously. The woman, just continued to eat her food in silent morose, practically stabbing the fish as she took small bites.  
“But Dad, I’m only 16.” I had been taken aback by this. Last time Sunny had told me, which wasn’t that long ago, he told me he was 15. “I can’t drink alcohol!” He said incredulously.

His father’s face had lit up with a burst of anger, “Do not tell me what you can and cannot drink, you are 16 years old, you are old enough to do whatever you damn well please.” he calmed down from his outburst as Maribelle poured a half-glass of wine. “Now, are you going to introduce us to this young man or not?” I had silently sighed in relief, he had not recognized me from all that time ago.

“This is Neptune.” He said plainly, I had not harbored any contempt from the uninterested introduction. His father, from both this experience and the last, had proved himself to be a tyrant and a bully. “He is my best friend.” He added a fleeting inflection of happiness.  
“It’s nice to meet you, sir.” I said, my lasagne had still remained untouched. However hungry I was, I didn’t want to cause any trouble through way of breaking manners  
“Likewise.” He retorted,” now Neptune, how did you meet my son?” he asked.  
“Baseball.” that seemed like something rich that a person of his status could appreciate.  
“I thought the season started a month ago?” he caught onto the ruse, but I knew a workaround.  
“We met last year, just never talked until this year,” I stated confidently, the longer I keep this up, the better Sunny’s life will be.  
“Sunny wasn’t even in school last year, he had a home tutor.” He knew.  
“What is your last name?” he asked, now knowing full well that I wasn’t affiliated with Sunny’s school.  
“Vasillias,” I told the truth this time, I thought I could do this for him.  
“Daddy, let’s talk about something else.” Sunny interjected, desperation had become apparent in his voice and in his look. He knew I was going to crack, he wanted to save me, he tried.  
“No, Son. this is an imposter and should be treated like filth.” He spat. His anger rising up again. “We don’t know who this child is or his parents.” he stood up and walked toward me. I stood up too, but I couldn’t compare the stature of his fully grown adult body to my puny 17 year old one. He was so close that I could feel the breath coming from his mouth.

Just then, Maribelle, bless her soul, walked in singing Happy Birthday with a birthday cake. The numbers 1 and 6 had been proudly displayed at the top of the cake. I turned to Sun, then back to his father. “Happy Birthday, Sunny.” I sneered at his dad. I left the room, his dad had then erupted into a fit and I heard the loud contact of hand to face. I flinched as soon as I heard it, and immediately felt guilty for what I had caused.

I left the building and quickly started going back towards my neighborhood, cutting through central park. It was twilight and the world took on an ethereal blue color all around me. I slipped down onto the grass and cried. I sobbed for a couple of minutes, thinking of the kind of hell that he must be going through. Someone was playing a familiar tune on the accordion somewhere in the distance, but it could still be heard all the way by the street. The day had gone from late afternoon to twilight with a certain ambiance that made the world seem to fade into a darker aesthetic gray. it was so aggressively gray, that you could almost, just almost make out a color. 

“Nep! Nep!” I heard someone call out. “Neptune!” He raced to me before I could get up and run. He put his hand on my shoulder and I didn’t dare look at him. He was hurt because of me and I could tell by how his voice cracked when saying my name. “Hey, it’s okay. I have it under control now. He won’t do that again.”  
I looked up and saw a bruise starting to form around his eye. I leaned against his shoulder and wrapped my arms around him and tried to wish it all away, but the damage had been done. I looked up and saw something completely new. A bright vibrant color emanating on his face, it all glowed with the same vibrancy, a color that resembled the sun in the sky. 

He smiled brighter and said, “do you see it too?” 

“Yeah,” I replied plainly, although all of the emotions I was feeling all appeared with how I answered. My voice scratched out, raspy and hoarse. After that, we knew things were different between each other.

 

We started a relationship soon after that. It continued all through High school, although it was still hard to keep it up with the way that his parents had a stronghold on his schedule, we still found time for each other.

We kept it a secret until we had both moved out of the house.

His parents hated me, no, even that word doesn’t have enough meaning. They loathed me. They thought that I had turned their precious son ‘into an abomination,’ really, it was more of him running to me. He and his parents lived in the high-end neighborhood, while I lived in the slums. They had penthouses and 50-year-old whiskeys, while we had crack homes and box-wine.

We moved out of the house and into a University dorm. It was a college town in Ohio. It honestly felt better to be out of the hustle and bustle of New York, and into a more quiet and slow town. There was a drawback. Although both of us had received scholarships in our respective fields, Art and Engineering, it was nowhere near close enough to pay off out of state tuition. The scholarships paid off our general tuition for school, we still had to find a way to sponge up enough money to pay for the dorms.  
I needed money. Bad. 

I already had three jobs, two full-time and one was…. Unpredictable. Unsavory. The only way I could keep my and Sunny’s dorm was to keep the RA, Tristen, “happy”. The RA would come to my dorm three times a semester, he would tell me he needed an essay done, I would smile at Sunny, he would smile back, I would tell him something along the lines of; “I’ll be back tomorrow, gotta help our bills and this essay is expensive and could give us money for food this week.” He would respond with something like; “You just go and do it, I’m proud of you for putting in extra work.” Then I would go

This ‘essay’ thing was code for our little deal. I would give my service, which almost had no limits as to what he wanted, just as long as I didn’t have to pay bills for our dorm, then his closeted ass would go to his father. His father just so happened to be the dean of the college, and he would get on his little computer that stored every student’s personal information and then wave our housing fees. He would tell his father that I helped him pass his classes by tutoring him, and then we would get off scot-free for the next 4 months.

It hurt to continue to see Sun’s face after I had to do those unholy things; the mornings after were the worst especially when Tristen was particularly rough. I often tried to avoid him as much as I could at those times. I was wallowing in my own self-pity. I hated myself for stooping that low, and I didn’t want that to transfer to him because I could come out of my shell with him.

The next time I saw the color was about a week after a ‘study’ session. This time, however; it was much more of a… troubling circumstance. Sunny and I had gotten into an argument about how I was “Growing more distant” and how he had been spending an extended amount of time on his paintings and we weren’t talking as much as we had wanted.   
While his argument was valid, it had no merit due to its own destructive viewpoints, the same had also applied to my own opinions, but mine were somehow ‘better’ than his. I had grown a little more focused towards my school as it’s difficulty had suddenly spiked up to new heights, however, I still was very much attracted to the first and only meaningful man in my life.

“I’m sorry if focusing more on school is more important than focusing on you and your loud, belligerent antics.” This wasn’t the only reason I had grown a little farther from him though.   
“Using bigger words when you talk doesn’t make you sound more intelligent, dumbass!”   
“And your constant need for attention doesn't make you seem any more approachable, asshole!”   
“I’m not asking for your undivided attention your highness, I’m asking for you to just check up on me every once in a while, fuckhead!”   
“I have been, you’re just so fucking occupied with your stupid black and white paintings that you never make time for me either!” he sighed and stepped closer to me

“You are my Sunshine...”   
“You can’t pull that card on me, I’m not fucking done with you yet!”   
“My only Sunshine...”   
“Stop it, I can’t fucking take this!”   
“You make me happy when skies are ‘Gray’...”   
“Look I get it, you don’t want to fight anymore.”   
“You’ll never know dear, how much I love you…”   
“I’m sorry I called you all those horrible things.”  
“So please don’t take my Sunshine away.”  
God that man knew how to get to me. I saw, this time, color from his eyes. Little ‘Golden’ drops of water were streaming down his face. I lost my composure after that. I threw myself at his chest and hugged him with all the strength I could muster and held onto him. I couldn’t let him get away, and I wouldn’t let these idiotic arguments be the reason I lose my color. 

After I had cried for a longer period than I had intended, I lifted my face away to see a large wet spot of glowing Purple emanating from his t-shirt along with his own bright Yellow tear-stained face. I kissed him and tried to reconcile for all the hatred, all the pain, and all the unnecessary insults that I had bestowed upon him.  
I hoped that this kiss had saved our relationship from the brink of being chained and pulled down to the place that we had been told that people like us were going. I hoped that the kiss was both a message of apology and forgiveness and that all of our troubles would just leave, as they had overstayed their welcome.

 

3 years later was the next time I had seen color. It was our wedding day. But God had other plans I suppose. 

We had our ups and downs. He found out about Tristen, we almost broke up because of that. He kept trying to tell me that I should have gone to him. I know that if I had gone to him for that, he would have gone back to his parents and he would have tried to beg them for money. I didn’t want that, I’m far too much a coward to admit when I’m in need. 

We got over it though. About 4 months after we had graduated from college, I proposed to him, then after that, everything came greatly. Sunny had gotten into three different galleries as a star artist and had been making upwards of 20,000$ each painting. He was heralded as the next up and coming master of painting. People had even said that they had seen colors because of his painting. Apparently one of his paintings looked very strange and almost comical when it had color. They described it as if someone had taken the color of the sun, dipped it into something that made it glow in the dark and thrown it onto the canvas. 

I had gotten into an engineering firm that worked with most major car companies and I was making a cool 75,000$ starting salary. It had the full package, benefits, retirement, and even a personal lawyer just in case something went awry. Everything was going well. We moved into this penthouse of this high rise in Columbus at the young age of 23 and we were ready for the rest of our lives.

The wedding day came. We got into a limo and sped off to the tabernacle. He wanted a traditional marriage and I didn’t really care. Everything was good for the most part. I mean his parents were gonna be there, and 2 of Ashley’s kids had found a way to make it to the ceremony. I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to get there.   
Apparently, the driver couldn’t either.

He ran a red light and died instantly to the 18-wheeler that thought it was good to cross. It hit the front of the limo, so the vehicle went flying in every which way.   
Sun’s right side was pinned from the neck down. I was lucky enough to land in a place that wasn’t hit by another car. When I came to, I saw fire about 5 feet away. I looked to the left and saw him. I crawled to him, freaking out. Giving the normal stereotypical schpeel that someone who was losing the love of their life would usually give. I plastered kisses onto his bloodied face and whimpered inaudible pleas to him.

He just told me to “Go.” and after that I just kind of went limp. The color was there. The color of blood was just as elegant as the color of the fire slowly encroaching to us. I pushed the door open. I left.

The police and ambulance came shortly after. I reverted back to what I was like back in the brothel. The police asked questions, the ambulance asked questions. Both had been met with silence for an answer.

I had gone full circle at this point. I quit my job, I had Sun’s life insurance money to pay for 5 years worth of the mortgage. I shut myself out from the outside world. Sun’s mother visited me a month after the funeral. She told me that she had always felt regret for not defending her son on that day so many years back when we had met. She wished she kept in touch with Sun to be able to filter enough money to pay our bills and that she had heard about Tristen. She said she was so angry with me for so long for hurting her baby like that. And that she forgives me for doing it just because she knows what I had to go through to help Sunny, and that she saw that I had great intentions, but “just a touch of bad execution.”

I’m glad she came around. I thought after her visit I could get better. But for some reason, the grays had faded to blacks and whites. There was no longer an inbetween. There was either a void in my vision, or there was just gleaming white. I had what was called heterochromatic vision. I was told that, due to a mix of the crash and my depression, I would never be able to tell the middle ground of white and black, and that seeing color was damn near impossible.

One day, as I was wallowing in self-pity, I got out of bed. In his shirt and underwear, I went out to the roof of the high rise. Looked out into the sunrise, or sunset. I had forgotten what directions the sun came and went, and didn’t bother to take a look at the time as I left.   
I hang my legs off of the building and felt a sudden urge. The strongest feeling I’ve ever felt. The urge to sing.  
The other night, dear   
As I lay sleeping   
I dreamed I held you in my arms   
When I awoke, dear   
I was mistaken   
Please don't take my sunshine away

 

That was the last time I saw color.

**Author's Note:**

> I might add more to the ending but I am unsure at this point in my life


End file.
